"Improvisation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many deficiencies. Earth, that in France or Gallipoli hid the germs of gangrene and tetanus, here merely produced a mild infection. Lucky for us that we did not need to inject the wounded with tetanus antitoxin. But an added charm was given to our work by the necessity of improvisation. Broken legs were put up in plaster casings with metal interruptions, so that the painful limb might be at rest, and yet the wound be free for daily dressings. The Huns left us plaster of Paris, damp indeed but ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... his personal manner. It was undertaken in collaboration with John La Farge, and perhaps the influence of La Farge, and of that eminently picturesque genius Stanford White, mingled with that of the younger French school in forming its decorative and almost pictorial character. It was a kind of improvisation, done at prodigious speed and without study from nature—a sketch rather than a completed work of art, but a sketch to be slowly developed into the reliefs of the Farragut pedestal, the angels of the Morgan tomb, the caryatids of the Vanderbilt mantelpiece, and, at length, into ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... characters of friends and acquaintances, and generally in such a manner that the company had no difficulty in guessing the person intended. On one of these occasions, Franz Ries was persuaded to take his violin and improvise an accompaniment to his friend's improvisation, which he did so successfully, that, long afterwards, he more than once ventured to attempt the same in public, with his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... at Chamouni, but they are leaving. To their great regret." I had got up, too; I listened to this statement, and I wondered. I am almost ashamed to mention the subject of my agitation. I asked myself whether this was a sudden improvisation, consecrated by maternal devotion; but this point has never been elucidated. "They are giving up some charming rooms; perhaps you would like them. I would suggest your telegraphing. The weather is glorious," continued Mrs. Church, "and the ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... with her. She then walks in her salon, holding in her hand a little green branch; and her words have an ardor quite peculiar to her; it is impossible to interrupt her. At these times she produces on one the effect of an improvisation." ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... form of prayer, and it never failed to move her to a vague aspiration, she herself knew hardly what. Her dreams of the world faded, and she was only cognisant of the dim church and the inspired improvisation of her beloved Monsieur Gabriel. This was his answer to her as yet unasked question. She had come to him for guidance, to beg his counsel concerning her brother's letter, and he had told her in his music all that he knew of the world. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... monotonous, tame, and melancholy. The one is given to proud daring, wooing, battle, and the triumph of victory; the other to musing, loving, and brooding enthusiasm. The stamp of the occasional, of improvisation, is upon all Provencal work; while with the German Minnesingers, everything—Nature as well as love—tends to be ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... Espronceda is more admirable for the form in which he clothed his thoughts than for those thoughts themselves. He wrote little and carefully. He is remarkable for his virtuosity, his harmonious handling of the most varied meters. He never, like Zorrilla, produces the effect of careless improvisation. In the matter of poetic form Espronceda has been the chief inspiration of Spanish poets down to the advent of Rubn Daro. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, with his happy knack of hitting off an author's characteristics in a phrase, says: "He still stirs us with his ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... people had brought comfortable clothing and bedding. Many others had fled in their night garbs, and comparatively few of these had had the self-possession to return and don their daytime clothes. As a result there had been much improvisation of garments suitable for life in the open air, and as the days went on many of the women arrayed themselves in home-made bloomer costumes, a sensible innovation under the circumstances and in view of the active outdoor work they were obliged ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... intellectual awakening. Hugh's mother, who had an extraordinary gift for improvisation, began to tell the children stories in the nursery evenings; and these tales of giants and fairies grew to have an extreme fascination for the child; not that he peopled his own world with them, as some imaginative children do; the boy's perceptions ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... grew so fond of Mike discovered several interesting facts about him, aside from his marvellous tenor voice. He had the talent of improvisation. When they became well enough acquainted for him to feel at ease in her presence, he sang bits of melody that were his own composition. She was delighted and encouraged him to cultivate the gift. Of course he knew nothing about playing any ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... proved that the 'furie francaise' is not the exclusive right of the stronger sex. In this jumble of grave, wild, and sad notes, Gerfaut recognized, by the clearness of touch and brilliancy of some of the passages, that this improvisation could not come from Aline's unpractised fingers. He understood that the piano must be at this moment Madame de Bergenheim's confidant, and that she was pouring out the contradictory emotions in which she had indulged for several days; ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... fail to remind herself—in all that which she said. Truth?—yes, just that misleading sufficiency of it in which a lie thrives. For, as every artist "in this kind" is aware, precisely as you would have the overgrowth of your improvisation richly phenomenal and preposterous, must you be careful to set the root of it in the honest soil of fact. To omit this precaution is to court eventual detection and consequent confusion ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... third reason remains which tends to confuse the student as to what really constituted opera. This is owing to the fact that there existed the very important element of improvisation, of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... Sometimes this improvisation had concluded with a homily in kinder words, in which she would be entreated to go forth and try to be a better woman. And sometimes, but not often, she had decided that a shoe clerk, no matter his age, would take her request as a mere incident in the day's trade. Other women wore such things, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... keep a hopeful eye—Mr. Duncan Grant, Mr. Lewis, Mr. Stanley Spenser, Mr. Gertler, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Bomberg, Mrs. Bell, and Mr. Epstein—for it would be absurd to omit from this list an artist possessed of such skill, scholarship, and surprising powers of improvisation and development as the last-named. Of these some already have been touched by that breath of life which, blowing from Paris, has revolutionized painting without much discomposing the placid shallows of British culture. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... will be found that birds have at least one attribute of genius: they can do their best only on great occasions. Our brown thrush, for instance, is a magnificent singer, albeit he is not of the best school, being too "sensational" to suit the most exacting taste. His song is a grand improvisation: a good deal jumbled, to be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,—that is, it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... violin from the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air,—his own, no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face, and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound, until I found myself in dream-land, with ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I, had called on Annunciata, brought me to her the next day. She was friendly, brilliant in her conversation, and appeared deeply impressed with my improvisation on "Immortality"—the immortality first of eternal Rome, and then of the fair singer's art—to which I was pressed when Bernardo let out the secret ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... like a woman!" she exclaimed. "You see, it did not concern me at all at the time I heard it. I didn't even realize its importance and I didn't hear much," she proceeded, her introduction giving time for improvisation. "You see, Partow was inspecting the premises with Colonel Lanstron. My mother had known Partow in her younger days when my grandfather was premier. We had them both ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... manners, a bright eye, fire, the best dough for a husband that heaven has ever kneaded. I will give you five per cent. on the dowry." "Since yesterday," he writes in another letter, "I have given up dowagers and have come down to widows of thirty. Send all you find to Lord Rhoone [this remarkable improvisation was one of his early noms de plume]; that's enough—he is known at the city limits. Take notice. They are to be sent prepaid, without crack or repair, and they are to be rich and amiable. Beauty isn't required. The varnish goes, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... inspired gaze of his blue eyes open on another world, the rosy glow that tinged his cheeks, and, above all, the heavenly serenity which ecstasy stamped on his proud and noble countenance, would have supposed that he was looking on at the improvisation of a really great artist. The illusion would have been all the more natural because the performance of this mad music required immense executive skill to achieve such fingering. Gambara must have worked ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... dancer once, and he had not entirely neglected the new school of foot improvisation, so different from the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... conceived to be common to a ghost. A melancholy madman, who evidently shared in the festivity with reluctance and regret, and who was, from time to time, urged on by his keepers, and a woman, who fancied herself to be Saint Catharine, and was subject to strange fits of ecstasy and improvisation, were also conspicuous among the dancers. Lucca, who played the violin with extraordinary spirit, every now and then marked the time by stamping his foot on the ground, while, in a stentorian voice, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... to their author. The "Eidolons" was sent back by Dr. H., of "Scribner's Monthly" with a lengthy, very insulting and contemptuous letter. "To the Sun-Set Breeze," was rejected by the editor of "Harper's Monthly" as being "an improvisation" only. "On, on ye jocund twain" was rejected by the "Century" editor as being personal merely. Several of the pieces went the rounds of all the monthlies, to be thus ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... one else who wanted the post. She was rather plain except when be-rouged and be-pencilled. The company included several tailors and tailoresses of talent, and the low comedian was a Dutchman who sold herrings. They all had the gift of improvisation more developed than memory, and consequently availed themselves of the faculty that worked easier. The repertory was written by goodness knew whom, and was very extensive. It embraced all the species enumerated by Polonius, including comic opera, which was not known to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Baccio Ugolino possessed some skill in improvisation, and was also accomplished in the art of singing and accompanying himself upon the lute or viol. We shall in another place in this work examine the methods of the lutenists and singers of the fifteenth century in adapting polyphonic compositions to delivery by a single voice with accompaniment ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... instrument, his chin in his hand, almost concealing his face. He beat the drum slowly with a little stick held in his right hand, and he sat motionless, in a reflective attitude, with his thoughts concentrated on his improvisation, peeping between his fingers at the ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... remembered. The automatic performer, being henceforth controlled more or less by reflection and criticism, becomes something of an artist: he trains himself to be consecutive, impressive, agreeable; he begins to compare his improvisation with its subject and function, and thus he develops what ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... there is not one which exhibits so high a degree of artistic skill, or so vigorous and powerful a genius, as this drama, in which every word, every dialogue, seems to unite the certainty of study and meditation with the fire and naturalness of a happy improvisation, and in which there is not a character nor an allusion which destroys the truth and vigour of the composition, viewed as a faithful mirror of Russian nationality, Russian history, and Russian character. The remainder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... that at the root of all ease lies slow, and, for long, profitless-seeming labor, as at the root of all grace lies strength; that ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil, sunk into the spirit, and making it strong and ready; that never worthy improvisation flowed from brain of poet or musician unused to perfect his work with honest labor; that the very disappearance of toil is by the immolating hand of toil itself. He only who bears his own burden can bear the burden of another; he only who has labored shall dwell at ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... possess an almost Tuscan power of improvisation. When he called to my daughter, who was consulting with a friend about a new gown and dressed hat she thought of wearing to an assembly, thus suddenly, while she hoped he was not ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of its spell; we all spent a delightful evening. The conversation had drifted into anecdote, and brought out in its rushing course some curious confessions, several portraits, and a thousand follies, which make this enchanting improvisation impossible to record; still, by setting these things down in all their natural freshness and abruptness, their elusive divarications, you may perhaps feel the charm of a real French evening, taken at the moment when the most engaging ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... to give you an improvisation. Listen then. You have heard me speak prepared, now hear me unprepared. I think I risk but little in making an attempt to speak without premeditation in view of the extraordinary approval which I have won ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... faculty of improvisation so often seen in Italy, is an example of the power of appropriate and rapid association. There is no doubt that this power is susceptible of development and cultivation, and that much that is brilliant in intuition is lost through the want of it. In spite of this, no system ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... improvisation: In praise of Charlie, the dandy, who feeds the girls on candy, drinks ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... his pomaded hair; he tore off his bib and his neck-tie, and for three minutes without cessation he shrieked wildly and unintelligibly. It was possible to make out, however, that "arteest" and "ten dollair" were the themes of the improvisation. Finally he sank exhausted into the chair, and his white-faced wife rushed ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... rights and wrongs of that controversy; my point is only that William James, in this genial evolutionary view of the world, has given a rude shock to the genteel tradition. What! The world a gradual improvisation? Creation unpremeditated? God a sort of young poet or struggling artist? William James is an advocate of theism; pragmatism adds one to the evidences of religion; that is excellent. But is not the cool abstract piety of the genteel getting more than it asks for? This empirical naturalistic ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... was not fastidious. His rank, unweeded eloquence, abounding in a play of words, rabbinic allegories, verses defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he professed to despise, with a shameless image here or there, product not of formal method, but of Neapolitan improvisation, was akin to [243] the heady wine, the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, volcanic soil, fertile in the irregularities which manifest power. Helping himself indifferently to all religions for rhetoric illustration, his preference was still for that of the soil, the old pagan ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... second part of the development the performer, exalted, even a little intoxicated with his sense of success, essayed a bit of improvisation considerably more important than the first. This time he ceased absolutely to follow Rubinstein's harmony, and, retaining simply the melody, changed, however, to a minor key, he produced an odd, rhythmical ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... development of the musical talents of the individual on Mars the pupil is impressed with the necessity of expressing the true self, and the original improvisation or composition is the method by which the pupil expresses his understanding of the subject. No one attempts to ape the technique or genius of another, for on Mars all are geniuses. This is true in every form of activity. All must be creators ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... the keys gently and his sorrows and his temptations faded from him. He glided into Bach, and then into Chopin and Mendelssohn, and at last drifted into dreamy improvisation, his fingers moving almost of themselves, his eyes half closed, seeing ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... its fulness and golden weight, the floods of sunshine, matching light with sound, spontaneous both, and rivals for the favors of the soft atmosphere. Singing with all its heart, outdoing all it knew, forgetting imitation in wild improvisation, watching her window as it danced upon the twigs and fluttered into the air, conscious of her listening as it purled and warbled towards her, and sounded every pipe and trumpet, virginal and clarion, hautboy and castanet, in the orchestra of its rustic bosom, the mocking-bird's ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... and untrue; as morality, enervating and antinomian. The author is assuredly far nearer the mark in another place when he speaks of "that immense improvisation which is the French Revolution" (ii. 35)—an improvisation of which every ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... singular gift of speech that she cast her spells and worked her wonders in this little circle. Full of thoughts and full of words; capable of poetic improvisation, had there not been a slight overweight of a tendency to the tangible and real; capable of clear, complete, philosophic statement, but for the strong tendency to life which melted down evermore in its lava-current the solid blocks of thought; she was yet, by these excesses, better fitted ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... life, when, as he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous "Farewell to Life." Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an ode,—and such papers ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... know Richard Strauss' big tone poems, the biggest things in music since Wagner. But did you know that he's written some charming little pieces for pianoforte? Just listen to this. It's a 'Traeumerei' or 'Revery,' a delicious little dreamy improvisation. He 'metrostyled' it himself and, as I've never heard anyone play it, I'm only too glad to have his directions. They give you the general hang of the thing 'right off the reel,' so to speak. But later on, when I become more familiar with it, if I want to vary the interpretation according to ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... the proud Llewellyn, half of her own blood, and began an upaupahura. She postured before him in an attitude of love, and commenced an improvisation in song about him. She praised his descent from his mother, his strength, his capacity for rum, and especially his power over women. He was own brother to the great ones of the Bible, Tolomoni and Nebutodontori, who had a thousand wives. He drew all ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... his frowning forehead, Patty ran to the piano, and began to play "Silver Threads Among the Gold," to a rag-time improvisation of ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... for Wordsworth's lyric range, especially so far as tune is concerned, was always narrow. His sense of melody was painfully dull, and some of his lighter effusions, as he would have called them, are almost ludicrously wanting in grace of movement. We cannot expect in a modern poet the thrush-like improvisation, the impulsively bewitching cadences, that charm us in our Elizabethan drama and whose last warble died with Herrick; but Shelley, Tennyson, and Browning have shown that the simple pathos of their music was not irrecoverable, even if the artless poignancy of their phrase be gone ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... of the time after a fashion, but in a distorted mirror and with a thin and superficial representation, nearer to bad drama than to good literature, full of horseplay and forced high jinks—his stories have all the inseparable faults of improvisation together with those of art that is out of fashion and manners-painting (such as it is) of manners that are dead, and when alive were those of a not very picturesque, pleasing, or respectable transition. Yet, for all this, Hook has a ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. It was an extraordinary improvisation. He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate, seemed to give his wit keenness, and to lend colour to his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible. ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... giving place to a sense of refined pleasure almost as fatal to my complacency, for it compelled me to think apart. What was this new pleasure? Ah! I was reading to an accompaniment—a faint, far-off improvisation just on the verge of silence, too scant and ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... comprehending, Marie de' Medici listened as he poured forth in impassioned improvisation lines which from that day to this no one who has ever loved has heard untouched. The actor's training gave to the burning words of the poet artistic expression worthy of the most finished theatrical production, and as such they lacked ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... entire improvisation there ran in the middle voices, like a thread, or cantus firmus, the insignificant notes, wholly insignificant in themselves, which he found on the page of the quartet, which by chance lay open on the music-stand; on them he built up the most daring ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... evasion pattern into the controls, a standard set, I had no time to punch up an improvisation. But he was on me like a wasp. I rejected it, threw in another ...
— Dogfight—1973 • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... The points wanted elaboration. Before they had fairly mastered one argument, the jury were hurried on to another. Mr. Ramsey is by no means incapable of making a forcible speech, and I think he should have trusted to his power of improvisation. There was no need for a long effort. He might have concentrated himself on a few salient points of our defence, and pressed them on the jury with all his might. His own sentiments, naturally expressed, in homely language, would have had a greater ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... improvisation the monk who played the part of prompter lost his place and skipped some paragraphs. The text returned to San Diego, and with a long series of exclamations and contrasts the father brought to a close the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and for the first time since the Norman Conquest men of the subject race were called up to deliberate on national affairs. It does not matter whether this was the stroke of a statesman's genius or the lucky improvisation of a party- leader. Simon fell, but his work remained; Prince Edward, who copied his tactics at Evesham, copied his politics in 1275 and afterwards at Westminster; and under the first sovereign since the Norman Conquest who bore an English name, the English people received ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... has thus proved a great Imperial asset, and in weighing the value of India's contribution to the War it should be remembered that India's forces were no hasty improvisation, but were an army in being, fully equipped and supplied, which had previously cost India annually a large ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... animated but decorous, that evening a week later. He had tried to play an improvisation called "The Battle of San Juan Hill," with a knowledge of the piano limited to the fact that if you struck alternate keys at the same time, there appeared not ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... foster and enrich the actual activity, we must understand the subtle value of initial play materials, of having at hand ready for the promptings of play impulse the necessary foundation stones on which a superstructure of improvisation can ...
— A Catalogue of Play Equipment • Jean Lee Hunt
... by point into orders already approved in principle than of starting any fresh hares. Staff Officers who have only had to do with land operations would be surprised, I am sure, at the amount of original thinking and improvisation demanded by a landing operation. The Naval and Military Beach Personnel is in itself a very big and intricate business which has no place in ordinary soldier tactics. The diagrams of the ships and transports; the lists of tows; the action of the Destroyers; tugs; lighters; ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... abdomen alone he danced, but his two balancing palms danced to the beat of the heat of the music's heart; and with heel and toe he danced. And as he danced, he sang, all apant, filling up with nonsense-sounds when the rhythm's imperative tramp outran his improvisation; and singing he danced, and dancing sang: with abdomen and arms he danced, and with toe ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... gave early indications of genius, and when only ten years of age used to collect an audience in his father's shop, by his talent for improvisation. He thus attracted the notice of Gravina, a celebrated patron of letters, who adopted him as his son, changed his somewhat ignoble name of Trepassi to Metastasio, and had him educated in every branch necessary for a literary career. He still continued to improvise verses on any given subject ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Cardinal, "could move rocks and trees, but he could not make them sing; therefore thou art greater than Orpheus, for thou compellest my aged Muse to song." The style of both words and music suggests that the whole cantata was thrown off, as Mainwaring suggests, on the spur of the moment, and this improvisation may well have taken place at one of the Arcadians' garden parties, for there is a well-known account of a similar improvisation by the poet Zappi and ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... heroes are dying. The Miserere is in our ears when the lovers are reconciled. Ragtime is imposed upon us while the old mother prays for her lost boy. Sometimes the musician with this variety of sympathy abandons himself to thrilling improvisation. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... poem: "The Toccata as a form of composition is not the measured, deliberate working-out of some central musical theme as is the Sonata or sound-piece. The Toccata, in its early and pure form, possessed no decided subject, made such by repetition, but bore rather the form of a capricious Improvisation, or 'Impromptu.'" ("A Toccata of Galuppi's" by Mrs. Alexander Ireland, published in London Browning ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the clubs of Tucson, Phoenix, Yuma, Los Angeles. And whenever he told it, Sudden Selmer would repeat what he called The Skyrider's Dream from the first verse to Mary V's last—even unto Bud's improvisation. He would paint Johnny's bombardment of the choir practice until his audience could almost hear the thud of the rocks when they landed. He would describe the welt on Aleck's head, the exact shade of purple in Curley's face ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... replied, mistrusting his own fluency; "if I go out there, I will make a better speech than I want to." He was hardly capable of the severe study and care by which great parliamentary speakers are trained; but before a popular audience, and on all occasions where brilliant and effective improvisation was called for, he was almost unequaled. His funeral oration over the dead body of Senator Broderick in California, his thrilling and inspiriting appeal in Union Square, New York, at the great meeting of April, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... a smile to those majestic Lombard buildings, the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life and movement. The thought of the artist in its first freshness and vivacity is felt in them. They have all the spontaneity of improvisation, the seductive melody of unpremeditated music. Moulding the supple earth with 'hand obedient to the brain,' the plasticatore has impressed his most fugitive dreams of beauty on it without effort; and what ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in 1832, Jasmin composed The Gascons, which he improvised at a banquet given to the non-commissioned officers of the 14th Chasseurs. Of course, the improvisation was carefully prepared; and it was composed in French, as the non-commissioned officers did not understand ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... took to going out again and seeing other men, while none of his friends, except Georges, had any suspicion of what had happened, the daimon of improvisation pursued him still. It would take possession of Christophe just when he was least expecting it. One evening, at Colette's, Christophe sat down at the piano and played for nearly an hour, absolutely surrendering himself, and forgetting that the room was full of strangers. They had no ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... smiled at them each, in succession. Every one had his turn, and this always helped to give Blanche an audience. Incoherent and aimless as much of her talk was, she never looked prettier than in the attitude of improvisation—or rather, I should say, than in the hundred attitudes which she assumed at such a time. Perpetually moving, she was yet constantly graceful, and while she twisted her body and turned her head, with charming hands that never ceased to gesticulate, and ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... was six o'clock, and Perry had lost all resemblance to the young man in the liniment advertisement. He looked like a rough draft fur a riotous cartoon. They were singing—an impromptu song of Baily's improvisation: ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... good-night in his suave, charming, slightly Hebraic manner. To Burnaby he said: "Thank you for the music. Improvisation is perhaps the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... recognizes the ability on his part to handle the language of the contemporary poets, and also perhaps to imbue it with his own personal feelings. His poems inserted in letters, which make a show of the elegant pretence of improvisation, but in reality already display a great dexterity in rhyming and in the use of imagery, may be compared to Hagedorn's poetry; but at the same time Goethe is trying to attain the serious tone of the "Pindarian" odes, just as Haller's stilted scholarly poetry conquered a place beside Hagedorn's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... proper for him to speak of or to say. The next third was employed in learning the "Imas Forosnadh," by which he was enabled to communicate thoroughly his knowledge to other pupils. Finally, the last three years were occupied in "Dichedal," or improvisation, so as to be able to speak in verse on all subjects of his study at a ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... introduce cricket and football into China. I told him that I thought this was improbable, because if the Chinese play games, they do not care who is the winner; the fun of the game is to us the improvisation of it as opposed to the organisation which appeals to the people here. Upon which he said that cricket was like a symphony of music. In a symphony every instrument plays its part in obedience to one central will, not for its individual advantage, but in order to ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... had fortunately caught sight of the familiar gray horse, with the accustomed bunch of hay sticking out behind, and had saved his life by an adroit improvisation. For Tom had been in the habit of substituting another name for "Mrs. McQuarry," and though he might take liberties with his neighbor across the way, well he knew the dire consequences of taking Auntie Jinit's name ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... and organizes the Sound into Speech, and which measures the sound quantitatively, as in Music, is the Scientific Attribute corresponding with Knowledge. The result of these two in combination is the Art of Speech, generally, and Improvisation or Song as the Fine ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have let the gift of lyric improvisation die out. Sitting islanded on some gray peak above the encompassing wood, the soul is lifted up to sing the Iliad of the pines. They have no voice but the wind, and no sound of them rises up to the high places. But the waters, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... feel almost solaced when the first phrase returns; and, free from the disturbing contradiction of a naive, simple, and inglorious happiness, we may again sympathize with the noble and imposing woe of a high, yet fatal struggle. This improvisation terminates like a dream, without other conclusion than a convulsive shudder; leaving the soul under the strangest, the ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... cloth forbade him to indulge in private theatricals, but he encouraged Shakespearean readings and often 'dressed up to please the children.' Sometimes of an evening he would perform upon the piano, indulging in a series of broken chords which he called improvisation, and upon these occasions he felt that he was a kind and thoughtful master when he set the drawing-room door open so that the servants might hear; and as his servants thought so too it was ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... a moment over a soft mingling of chords she began with a little ripple of melody, MacDowell's lovely, hurrying, buoyant "Improvisation," with its aeolian vibrancies, its light, bright surges of sound, sinking at the last into cradled restfulness. Without pause or transition she passed on to Grieg; the wistful, remote appeal of the strangely misnamed "Erotique," plaintive, solemn, and in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... in the world that members of the nobility were wont to throng to her house, and many sovereigns, en passage at Florence, took pains to seek her society. Corilla's successor was the beautiful Fantastici, a young woman of pleasing personality and remarkable powers of improvisation, who soon became a ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... passionate, vain, susceptible, and endowed with a reckless bravery and contempt of death. The Malays have considerable originality in versification. The pantoum is particularly theirs—a form arising from their habits of improvisation and competitive versifying. They have also the epic or sjair, generally a pure romance, with much naive simplicity and natural feeling. And finally, they have the popular song, ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... debris; men who stopped in passing kept telling what a fine fellow young Bates was, what good timber he was sending in. Several of them told George frankly they thought that was to be his job. He was so ashamed of that, he began instant improvisation. ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... army which the French Government held to be capable of intimidating the League of Nations garrison of ten thousand fully equipped men, was thus improvised. The supposition is that interested parties connived at its improvisation. It could not otherwise have sprung spontaneously into being. After the first week of the rising, many of the insurgents began to desert the leader Korfanty on the ground that their wages were not high enough. Much money had to be spent in the ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... given such delight, has influenced so many writers, and has taught so much to so many persons, can hardly have been a shallow mannerist, or an ungovernable partisan. No one denies that Macaulay had a prodigious knowledge of books; that in literary fecundity and in varied improvisation he has rarely been surpassed; that his good sense is unfailing, his spirit manly, just, and generous; and lastly, that his command over language had unequalled qualities of precision, energy, and brilliance. These ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Teutonic bandits would arouse protests which might injure our cause. I, being no orator, had only my poor written speech, which, as I could not alter it, became dangerous. It was necessary to prepare the ground. Destree mounted the platform and, in a masterly improvisation, began by establishing a long, patient and scholarly parallel between Flemish and Italian art, between the great painters of Florence and Venice and those of Flanders and Brabant; and thence, by imperceptible degrees, he shifted his ground to the present distress in Belgium, to the atrocities and ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... who wishes to "carry away" his body of players as well as his audience, the former to a unanimously acted improvisation, the latter to a unanimously felt emotion, needs above all "commanding personal magnetism," and everything else must ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Sunrise, Fahrenheit, 62.25 degrees. Our Jerusalem bread being now exhausted, we took to that of the desert-baking, which is very good while fresh and hot from the stones on which the improvisation of baking is performed, but not otherwise for a European digestion: and our servants, with the Bedaween, had to chase the chickens every morning. The survivors of those brought from Jerusalem being humanely let out of their cages ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... feeling which pervades many of Emerson's earlier Essays and much of his verse, in these long-treasured reminiscences of the poetical improvisation with which the two boys were thus unexpectedly favored. Governor ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... action, and the whole artistic keeping of the piece, which never passes into genuine tragedy, but stays within the limits of romantic pathos, distinguish the 'Orfeo' as a typical production of Italian genius. Thus, though little better than an improvisation, it combines the many forms of verse developed by the Tuscans at the close of the Middle Ages, and fixes the limits beyond which their dramatic poets, with a few exceptions, were not destined to advance. Nor was the choice of the fable ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... of these passages there would start tones of ravishing and gentle beauty—the incense of an adoring heart wafted to the black heavens through the lightnings and lamentations of Nineveh. Again the musician changed the purpose of his improvisation; it was no longer dismal and appalling, it was pathetic. The instrument became, as it were, the organ of sadness, it became eloquent with an inarticulate wo; it was a breast bursting with affliction, a voice broken with sorrow, a soul dissolving with emotions. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... of intense amusement to Harry, who insisted on the recital of detail after detail, until Desiree allowed her memory to take a vacation and substitute pure imagination. Nor was the improvisation much inferior to ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... sudden thought; impromptu, improvisation; inspiration, flash, spurt. improvisatore^; creature of impulse. V. flash on the mind. say what comes uppermost; improvise, extemporize. Adj. extemporaneous, impulsive, indeliberate^; snap; improvised, improvisate^, improvisatory^; unpremeditated, unmeditated; improvise; unprompted, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... post farther south along the pike, and Drew settled himself in his own patch of cover, with Hannibal close at hand. The passing of time was a fret, but one they were used to. Drew thought over the plan. Improvisation always had to play a large part in such a project, but he believed they had a chance ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... transcript by Mrs. Shelley, who has written in playful allusion to her toils as amanuensis Aspetto fin che il diluvio cala, ed allora cerco di posare argine alle sue parole'. The poem is thus supposed to have been Shelley's attempt at improvisation, if not indeed a translation from the Italian of the 'improvvisatore' Sgricci. The Shelleys do not seem to have come to know and hear Sgricci before the end of December 1820. The Italian note after all has no very clear import. And Dr. Garnett in 1905 inclined to the view ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... must be gone in it. I won't be facing an army. And what they have in the way of weapons may be powered by installations in the ship. A lot of damage done there. Or even if the ship lifted—" He was not sure of what he could do; this was a venture depending largely on improvisation ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... conditions were that he should be able to read music at sight. This he could not do, and his utter incapacity was tested at the Mahlcasten, before a crowd of artists, by the conductor. Barty failed signally, amid much laughter; and he impudently sang quite a little tune of his own, an improvisation. ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... character. In the year of his election as deputy, his friend Jose Antonio Garcia Blanco collected from local journals the series of poems, Flores do campo, which is supplemented by the Ramo de flores (1869). This is Joao de Deus's masterpiece. Pires de Marmalada (1869) is an improvisation of no great merit. The four theatrical pieces—Amemos o nosso proximo, Ser apresentado, Ensaio de Casamento, and A Viuva inconsolavel—are prose translations from Mery, cleverly done, but not worth the doing. Horacio ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... above all from spontaneity—it is an improvisation. Friendship, on the contrary, is, so to say, built up. It is a sentiment that progresses with circumspection. It is the egoism of the mind, whilst love is ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... affection. But he was a solitary man for the most part, and mixed with men, involved in a cloud of his own irresistibly fantastic and whimsical talk; for his real gift was half-humorous, half-melancholy improvisation rather ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... refusing to enter a boat to save himself, though he was such a bad swimmer and was in danger of cramp; and how he sang Bal chez Boule while the men worked at the pumps; they permitted the apres noces of M'sieu' and Madame Jean Jacques Barbille to be as brilliant as could be, with the help of lively improvisation. Even speech-making occurred again in an address of welcome some days later. This was followed by a feast of Spanish cakes and meats made by the hands of Carmen Dolores, "the lady saved from the sea"—as they called her; not knowing that she had saved herself, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... residence, to the still greater terror of the microscopic courtiers, began that "genial" and wild life which he and his august companion led during several years. Hunting, riding on horseback, masquerades, private theatricals, satirical verse, improvisation of all sorts, flirtation particularly, filled up day and night, to the scandal of all worthy folk, who were utterly at a loss to account for his serene highness saying "Du" to this Frankfort roturier. The gay ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Macaulay advances with his hectoring sentences and his rough pistolling ways, we feel all the time that his pulse is as steady as that of the most practised duellist who ever ate fire. He is too cool to be betrayed into a single phrase of happy improvisation. His pictures glare, but are seldom warm. Those strokes of minute circumstantiality which he loved so dearly, show that even in moments when his imagination might seem to be moving both spontaneously and ardently, it was really only a literary instrument, a fashioning tool and not a melting ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... Borgogna," was so highly admired by the Venetian manager, to whom, it was offered, that he induced friends of his to release young Donizetti from his military servitude. He now pursued musical composition with a facility and industry which astonished even the Italians, familiar with feats of improvisation. In ten years twenty-eight operas were produced. Such names as "Olivo e Pasquale," "La Convenienze Teatrali," "Il Borgomaestro di Saardam," "Gianni di Calais," "L'Esule di Roma," "Il Castello di Kenilworth," "Imelda di Lambertazzi," have no musical significance, except as ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... purchase what necessaries could be remembered while narrowly watching the clock. I was astride the bulwarks again when the Windhover was free of her moorings. There was a lack of deliberation and dignity in this departure which gave it the appearance of improvisation, of not being the real thing. I could not believe it mattered whether I went or not. My first voyage had, that is, those common circumstances which always make our crises incredible when they face us, as if they had met us by accident, in mistake for some one else. The bascules of the Tower ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... ultra-violet rays and X-rays and cosmic rays, trying to keep making some sort of intelligent sounds while they clung together and waited, and, with the other half of his mind, trying not to think of everything that could go wrong with that jerry-built improvisation they had just dumped onto Keegark. If it didn't blow, and the geeks found it, they'd know that another one would ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... as "Plus Ultra," and in an old edition it is dedicated to "Non plus Ultra." The latter was meant for Woelfl, a famous pianist and contemporary. His music is now forgotten, and his name is principally remembered in connection with Beethoven; like the latter, his talent for improvisation was great. The late J.W. Davidson, in his long and interesting preface to Brewer & Co.'s edition of Dussek's A flat sonata, leads us to believe that Dussek's publisher, and not the composer himself, was responsible for the change of title to "Plus Ultra." The ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... vision danced before Mr. Britling's eyes of red flannel petticoats being torn up in a rapid improvisation of soldiers to resist a sudden invasion. Passing washerwomen suddenly requisitioned. But one must not let oneself be laughed out of good intentions because of ridiculous accessories. The idea at any rate was the ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... physical force, but by intellectual superiority as well. The poetesses of the Arabs are numerous, and some of them hold a high rank. Their poetry was impromptu, impassioned, and chiefly of the elegiac and erotic type. The faculty of improvisation was cultivated even by the most barbarous tribes, and although such of their poetry as has been preserved is mostly a kind of rhymed prose, it often contains striking and beautiful thoughts. They called improvised poetry "the daughter ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... varied in character, some of them being too fiery to be attempted by mortals. It is related that Akbar, the emperor, once ordered the famous singer, Naik Gobaul, to sing the Raagni, or improvisation, of the mode of fire. The poor singer entreated for a less dangerous task, but in vain. Then he plunged up to his neck in the waters of the river Jumna, and began. Before he had finished half of the song, the water around him began ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... lightly from the sailor collar of a pink gingham blouse. She was balancing lightly as she walked, keeping time to the rhythm, and followed by a procession of children in single file. (A belief in the efficacy of motion to stimulate one's power of improvisation made Old Mother Gibson the liveliest of games.) And arriving at the center of the stage, she delivered herself in a singsong ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... listened astonished. The words and the simple melody which carried them were evidently an improvisation. But the voice—did that issue from a human throat? Yes, for in distant Spain and far-off Rome, in great cathedrals and concert halls, he had sometimes listened entranced to voices like this—stronger, and delicately trained, but reared upon even ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... her heart and soul; and she flew now through the starlit, sultry night, crying, "La guerre! La guerre! La guerre!" and chanting to the enraptured soldiery a "Marseillaise" of her own improvisation, all slang, and doggerel, and barrack grammar; but fire-giving as a torch, and rousing as a bugle in the way she sang it, waving the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee] |
